


Schenectady

by muse_in_absentia



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 23:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3428951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_in_absentia/pseuds/muse_in_absentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected turn of events land Tom and Carl someplace they didn't intend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Schenectady

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very very much to [mutuisanimis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis/pseuds/mutuisanimis) for not only the wonderful beta job, but for introducing me to this fabulous series in the first place. I suppose, that means this is all your fault.
> 
> Also, all remaining errors are mine, since I am incapable of leaving well enough alone, and may have added a little bit here or there after the fact.
> 
> NME compliant. Given their ages in SYWTBAW I figured Tom and Carl to be in college in the mid 90's, which is the time period this takes place.

Schenectady

 

_“Stick to those instructions,” Carl said. “Don’t be tempted to improvise. That claudication is the oldest one in New York, and it’s the trickiest because of all the people using it all the time. One false syllable in a spell and you may wind up in Schenectady.”_  
Is that another world? _Fred asked.  
Carl laughed. “It might as well be…” ~ So You Want to be a Wizard_

 

It was an unusually rainy day in midtown Manhattan. The overcast sky was expressing itself by letting go of all the water it could find in the form of actual sheets sluicing down and drenching anything and everything within seconds of stepping outside. Crowds of usually harried people were even worse, rushing about their business, letting the rain drive their pace, and by association, their moods to both new highs and lows respectively. They scrambled between awnings and doorways, heads down, dueling with their umbrellas and ignoring even the siren song of hot coffee.

If, among the throng, a tall, dark-haired college kid in a grey NYU sweatshirt and crisp jeans was weaving between the people, and the raindrops, looking for all the world like it was as dry as the surface of the moon, no one seemed to notice. 

With a quick glance at a non-descript leather watch, Tom Swale frowned. 1:17PM. He would be cutting it close to drop off his story and still make it to Munich on time. He tried to call to mind the words that would form the teleportation wizardry and hold them half-finished in his mind, but he was already holding the water repellant wizardry together, and trying to negotiate pedestrian traffic as well as vehicular traffic, and there were only so many things he could concentrate on at once. He tripped on the curb and fell against the person in front of him.

Ready to face a miserable New Yorker on a miserable day, Tom dropped all the wizardries he was trying to hold onto and let the rain in. He shivered at the sudden chill that sank immediately through his clothes and into his bones despite the late spring temperatures.

Words of apology were forming on his lips when the other person turned around and he was met with warm brown eyes in an olive-skinned face. The words died there, and a small smile tried to take their place, but he bit it down.

“Tom?” A familiar voice asked.

All right, it seemed the smile wasn’t to be contained. Tom let his mouth quirk up, although he did at least try and keep it somewhat rueful. “Sorry about that, Carl.” He shrugged and glanced down at the curb. “These things are always jumping up where you least expect them.”

The corners of Carl’s mouth twitched upwards under his heavy moustache. “Ah yes, at the edges of roads. One must keep an eye on those sneaky curbs. Who would ever expect one there?”

Tom chuckled, grinning. “Apparently not me.” They started walking together in the direction of Grand Central Station, Tom sneaking a quick glance at Carl when he was sure the other man wasn’t looking. It was a shame that Carl roomed just down the hall this semester, it made it doubly imperative that he keep a great many things to himself lest life get extremely awkward. Wizardry was probably secondary to the fact that the way Carl’s moustache bristled when he spoke made Tom’s insides squirm. He did have a soft spot for a bit of scruff. Oh well, that’s what the trip to Munich was for, theoretically.

“So, where are you headed on this soggy Friday afternoon? Skipping class?” Carl asked, stopping at a street vendor to buy himself a coffee that to Tom looked strong enough to eat through the cup. (Or perhaps not. It didn’t look like that yellow fizzy thing he made the mistake of buying the last time he was at the Crossings, which had _actually_ eaten through the cup, one slow bite at a time, as he watched in equal parts horror and fascination.)

Tom held up a slightly damp manila folder. “You’re one to talk, but no. My afternoon class was cancelled. Been doing some freelance writing for a magazine out on Long Island, short stories and the like. I need to drop this off by tomorrow, but I have a date tonight and I don’t really want to be worrying about deadlines all night.”

With a smirk Carl gave him a sidelong glance even while holding out a second steaming cup, this one filled with perfectly spiced chai. “So, you have a date, huh?”

Startled, Tom choked on the mouthful of chai he had just taken. Why had he said that out loud?

“That sounds like more fun than my sister’s birthday party, which is where I’m headed,” Carl continued, oblivious to Tom’s internal distress. “You’ll have to tell me all about her later.”

That, of course, was the part Tom was concerned about. As they headed into Grand Central Station together he wracked his brain for a way out of that without having to lie. Fortunately—or maybe not so fortunately—he was spared by the appearance of three Tawalf skittering down the hallway on their spindly legs.

The first scream echoed off the walls, sounding as if many people had all screamed in unison. The rest of the screaming started almost immediately, and the crowd was suddenly all pushing for the door at once. Tom felt a like salmon swimming upstream trying to get through. It took him a second to realize that Carl hadn’t tried to leave with the rest of the panicked people, but was instead pushing forward at his side. He didn’t really have time to worry about how he was going to explain what he was about to do, but rather pushed open the door to the little deli that housed the worldgate, ignoring the startled look from the greasy-looking shop owner. Mouthing the words in the Speech that would tumble the Tawalf directly back home through the gate, if he could just tempt them there first, Tom slid to a stop directly in front of the world gate. He just spit out the last word as the Tawalf piled in after them, growling about stolen payments and missing bribes. Tom was mostly certain that they were on the wrong planet since Earth was currently sevarfrith, but one could never be certain about these things.

“What are you doing?” Carl hissed as the world gate crackled behind them.

“Hopefully sending them back to where they came from,” Tom muttered, eyes on the Tawalf, holding his ground and hoping they would keep approaching rather than start shooting. He held tight to the idea that they were unfamiliar with their surroundings and therefore might not want to risk setting off weapons. Two soft, slow humans shouldn’t be any trouble. 

“That’s not going to—”Carl was cut off when the Tawalf rushed them, and Tom pushed him out of the way, letting the charging mercenaries tumble into the activated world gate behind them. There was a bright flash of white and a spinning, tugging sensation followed by hitting the ground. Hard.

“Work,” Carl finished, glaring up from where he had landed, half underneath Tom.

Fighting the urge to inhale the scent of the man beneath him, Tom hauled himself to his feet, and held out a hand for Carl. “I don’t see them anymore, do you?”

“No,” Carl drawled slowly, accepting the hand. Tom felt his pulse stutter at the contact. “But I also don’t see Grand Central anymore. You didn’t take the time to properly name them before sending them through. In fact, you couldn’t seeing as you didn’t have that kind of information. I don’t even want to imagine the damage you did to the gate, seeing as it wasn’t configured to go off-world unless it was directly to the Crossings. Not to mention, where are we?” He looked around and shook his head. “You shouldn’t be allowed near a gating unsupervised ever again after that little stunt.”

Tom snorted and forced his fingers to uncurl from the warm hand in his, just managing to stop himself from asking if that meant Carl was going to personally supervise him from now on. “I really ought to be surprised, but somehow I’m really not. And I figured a generic identifying matrix into the wording along with loose descriptors for three carbon based entities, it _should_ have filled in its own variables and sent them home, not done… whatever just happened.”

“You can’t use an identifying matrix in a transport wizardry,” Carl argued, while poking around at the really dusty and outdated technology they were suddenly surrounded by in a cramped, dimly lit room.

“Of course you can. I’ve modified a basic if/then algorithm and combined it with a substantive quantifier to plug in the variables of structure at the very minimum, and stacked with a behavioral imagery recognition structure it takes care of itself.”

Carl’s hand stopped midway to poking at what looked like an old lithograph and he blinked a couple of times, looking at Tom as if he’d never really seen him before. “You _stacked_ a behavioral imagery recognition structure with—well, anything?”

The grin that crept up Tom’s face was a touch smug, but he tried to tamp it down. Waving the manila folder he shrugged before putting the folder into his claudication with a sigh. “I am, on occasion, passably decent with words. And are we _actually_ having a theoretical discussion of the structure of a transportation wizardry?”

The small chuckle that Carl let out left Tom’s cheeks warm. “I thought it relevant since, if you’ll look around,” he paused and waited until Tom did so, still missing the point. “there’s _no gate_!”

Tom blinked. Then blinked again. Then let out a small cough. “Well,” he muttered, staring at the slightly frayed cuff of his jeans, “that’s not good.” The idea of a teleportation flitted through his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. Without knowing where they were that was a useless idea.

After several minutes of extremely colorful language on Carl’s part, which Tom found equal parts amusing and humiliating since he had inadvertently caused it, he finally interrupted. “Maybe,” he hedged, staring at the smudged glass door across the room in a desperate attempt to not make eye contact and make Carl any more irritated than he already was. “Maybe we should try and figure out where we ended up. The labels on these things are in English, so we have to still be on Earth, at least. It can’t be that bad.”

“Not that bad?” Carl scoffed. “Do you have any idea the hell I’m going to catch for missing my sister’s birthday?”

“She’ll be angry?”

“Not terribly, but I have a very Italian mother. The guilt. You can’t imagine the guilt.”

Tom laughed. “Is it anything like having a Catholic mother?”

Another cheek warming chuckle. “Catholic mother and Italian mother are synonymous.”

“Oh dear. Let’s see if we can’t find a payphone. I’ll talk to her. It’s my fault after all. Do they know you’re a wizard?”

Carl nodded. “I had to tell them when I was fifteen. My mother caught me teleporting out of my room after she had grounded me. I was on errantry and it couldn’t wait until she was over my multiple missed curfews that week.” Then he pulled a blocky cell phone out of his pocket. It looked like one of those off brand deals where you had to buy minute cards like long distance cards. “I’ll call as soon as I have some idea if I’ll make it to any part of dinner,” he muttered with a pinched look that spoke volumes about how much he was looking forward to that discussion.

“You’re lucky,” Tom grumbled as he tested the door, which was locked. “I had to go to school as far from my family as I could manage so they wouldn’t find out.” _Among other things_ , he thought to himself bitterly, trying very hard not to watch Carl’s mouth while he was talking.

With a couple of words in the Speech and a gentle finger Carl coaxed the door into opening for them. They stepped outside into a bright sunny morning. “Well,” he said, squinting up. “It beats the rain, at least.”

The door clicked shut and locked behind them and Tom looked around. They were down a small one-way street, narrow enough to look more like an alleyway than a real usable roadway, at least, until a rusty Civic drove by blasting music and nearly splashing them as it barreled over a large pothole like it was smooth road.

A quick glance behind them told him that they had just come out of the closed Thomas Edison museum, although, that didn’t do much to tell him where they were. Shrugging he grinned. “Pick a direction and we’ll see what we can find.”

Carl gave him a look that said quite plainly that he thought Tom might very well be insane, but he swung out to their right and started walking briskly.

Tom, who wasn’t quite used to the change in pace of life between California and New York jogged slightly until he caught up again. They walked in silence for a couple of blocks, passing a small ticketed parking lot and a rundown pub called Pinhead Susan’s. Carl snorted as he took in the sign, but didn’t say anything.

Not two blocks later they emerged onto a much more traveled road, State Street, facing a large marquis that read Proctors Theatre in large letters, with _Cabaret March 23 through March 30_ in smaller letters underneath.

After weighing the choice between the somewhat official looking buildings lining the rather steep hill to their left and the more rundown looking shops to their right, Tom decided in favor of his knees and turned right.

Carl raised an eyebrow at the decisive decision. “What did you see that I didn’t?” he asked quietly.

Tom chuckled. “Nothing yet. I just didn’t want to hike up that large hill until I know I have to for some reason.” 

Both of them looking for something a little more concrete than just the generic names they saw on shop and street signs they kept walking, passing under a train bridge before crossing Erie Blvd. which seemed in desperate need of a pave job, as well as a mattress store that advertised $20 mattresses with handwritten sign taped to smudged windows. “Does that sign actually say $20?” Tom asked, astounded. “I don’t even want to imagine how they can sell those that cheaply,” he continued with a small shudder.

Carl laughed his agreement and Tom felt his heartbeat stutter briefly. _And now I don’t even have my date to distract me,_ he thought morosely. 

Another block and they stumbled across a large brick building with a sign proclaiming it Schenectady County Community College.

“Schenectady,” Carl muttered, “isn’t that upstate?”

“We’re still in New York?” Tom exclaimed, taking a more thorough look around, brow furrowing.

“Okay,” Carl continued. “Nothing happens without a reason.” He strolled onto the tiny campus as if he belonged there, Tom trailing behind trying very hard not to watch the way Carl’s back muscles constricted beneath his thin tee-shirt as he walked.

As it turned out the entire campus consisted of two buildings, a parking lot that butted up against a track, a small patch of grass large enough for three metal benches and what looked like a barely paved trail leading off into some trees. They snagged a bench as a couple of girls in short skirts and knee-high boots abandoned it to scurry off to class. Pulling his manual out from a pocket that was clearly not large enough to hold the tattered book Carl flipped to the back and swore softly. He held the book out to Tom who glanced down and saw that Carl was right, nothing happens without a reason. 

Errantry.

“Well, at least now you know what to tell your mother,” he said, trying to smile and falling somewhat short. He managed to resist reaching out and touching when Carl went pale at that, but only just. _Damn it, why did he have to be a wizard. It was hard enough to ignore him when he just lived down the hall, but if this is going to become a regular thing…_ his thoughts, which he fervently hoped weren’t projecting, trailed off as Carl put his phone to his ear and started pacing.

“Mama—“

Tom got up to give Carl some privacy and to have a look around. He was just noticing the large well lit sign on top of a large building. At least, he assumed it had to be a large building since it was over the trees and at least the distance of a couple of city blocks away. It was just a large circle with the letters GE emblazoned in the center. Before he could think about why that was triggering something in the back of his brain he saw a kid barely high school age looking around before slipping down the path into the trees.

Hoping a kid that young wasn’t looking for drugs (in the barely fifteen minutes they had been there he had already seen three drug deals go down) he dropped back and touched Carl’s arm lightly. He pointed in the direction of the blue hoodie disappearing into the trees. Carl glanced that way, but gave no other indication that he was paying attention.

“I’m sorry, Mama. It can’t be helped. I promise I’ll make it up to her when I get back.” A pause. “No, Mama, I don’t know when that’ll be.” Carl let out a long silent breath. “I’m always careful. Yes. Yes. I promise. Yes. I have to go now. Yes. Yes. Bye.” He closed his eyes for a long moment before nodding at Tom and starting in the direction of the trees.

Walking probably too close together they found themselves on a jogging path looking for a blue hoodie. “Did we lose him?” Tom whispered, looking around.

“We’re terrible at this,” Carl added dryly. “We don’t even know if this kid has anything to do with why we’re here and we still can’t find him.”

Tom, whose instincts were telling him that this was right, didn’t say anything, just kept walking as the trees got thicker and the light got darker. About a quarter of a mile down the path he spotted a flash of blue off the trail and through the trees. Pointing, he started picking his way through mud and brambles, with Carl following behind and having a much harder time with the underbrush. _City boy,_ he thought loudly, just to see the face Carl made back at him. Apparently he thought it a little too loudly, because the boy, wide eyed with close cropped hair and coffee colored skin, jumped and spun around.

With a flush Tom held up a hand. “ _Dai stihó_ , cousin.”

The boy’s shoulders drooped as the tension went out of them. “ _Dai_ ,” he muttered, then he shook his head. “Sorry, thought you were someone else. Tyler.”

“Tom,” tipping his head in the direction of Carl he smiled, “and my friend Carl.”

Tyler gave them a tense smile and turned back around, dropping to his haunches at the edge of a still slightly frozen riverbank. 

Looking him over Tom realized the boy was probably younger than he first thought. Maybe thirteen. Crouching down with him he kept his eyes on the ice. “So, what are you working on?”

Without looking up, Tyler sighed. “Have you two been sent to help with the Hudson dredging team?”

“Isn’t the Hudson larger than this?” Tom asked looking out over the water which could barely be called more than a large creek from where he stood.

“Oh, this is the Mohawk river. The Hudson is too unstable right now to test wizardries on, so we’re practicing here, in theory anyway.”

“That makes sense,” Carl muttered from where he had leaned against a pine tree and was not so subtly glaring at the mud caking his sneakers and the bottoms of his jeans.

“Honestly, Carl, you’d think you never learned a cleaning wizardry,” Tom snorted before he could stop himself.

Carl blinking a couple of times then chuckled ruefully. “Don’t mind the city boy,” he smirked, “I’ll survive it.”

Tom felt his face warm at the gentle dig, but he chose to ignore it, instead turning back to Tyler who was watching them with a strange look on his face.

“How long have you two been partners?” he asked.

Tom looked at Carl who was looking back at him just as puzzled. “Partners?” They both asked in unison.

“Well, sure,” Tyler said. “The only wizards I’ve met who bicker like that are either related or me and my partner, Sam… when he shows up.”

“Is that who you were expecting?” Tom asked gently, wishing that Carl would help him out with this. 

Tyler shrugged. “We were both assigned to the dredging team, and we were supposed to be testing out the wizardry we were working on, but he has our notes and I haven’t heard from him in nearly a week.”

Tom blinked at how casual Tyler sounded about that and he glanced at Carl who was frowning beneath his moustache. “Is that normal?” Carl asked quietly.

Looking out over the water Tyler’s eyes pinched a little around the corners. “It’s probably just his mom. She doesn’t let him out very often, and he doesn’t like to teleport out because she gets mad and that’s not good for him.”

No thought sharing was needed for Tom to know that he and Carl were thinking the same thing. “Maybe we could talk to him?” he asked slowly.

Tyler shrugged again. “Come back tomorrow at the same time. It’s when we were supposed to meet last week, and I just keep coming by every day hoping that he’ll show back up.”

“Have you tried stopping by his house?” Carl asked.

Tyler’s eyes got huge. “No! His mom would crucify him if I did that. She’s convinced he made some sort of deal with the devil and that it’s my fault. She didn’t like me very much _before_ he became a wizard, but now…” he trailed off and winced slightly. “I don’t want to get him in trouble. Just come back tomorrow. I have a good feeling about tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Carl said quickly, cutting off anything Tom might have tried to add. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know of a hotel around here, would you? We’re going to need someplace to stay if we’re going to come back tomorrow.”

“There’s a place literally on the other side of the bridge, across the street from Jumpin Jacks, but it’s kind of expensive. Real ritzy place, but they’ll probably have a room. I’m sure there are cheaper places, but I wouldn’t know where they were, I’m not _technically_ allowed to wander around the city alone.”

Tom winced inwardly, but shrugged. Sometimes there were perks to having his father’s credit card, and a father who wouldn’t notice the difference on the bill later. “It’ll be fine. Thanks, Tyler.”

Slipping the boy a piece of paper Carl said, “Call me if you hear from Sam before tomorrow and we’ll come down. Or just if you need something.”

With a nod Tyler tucked the paper into his pocked. “ _Dai_ ,” he said quietly before disappearing with a pop.

*****

They found the hotel, the Glen Sanders, with no difficulty at all. The concierge couldn’t quite keep the smirk off his face when Tom asked for a room. Tom fought to keep his face neutral despite the desperate urge to slink out the door rather than face the blatant assumptions staring him down. Fortunately, the man kept his mouth shut when Tom put his father’s platinum card on the counter.

Carl let out a low whistle when they let themselves into the room. It was lushly decorated, and the large bed was clean and comfortable looking with a thick white comforter and more pillows than any one person would ever know what to do with. “Your father won’t mind you putting a room like this on his credit card?” he asked, poking in the mini fridge under the window.

Tom snorted, trying to keep the panic out of his voice as he stared at the single large bed. Carl hadn’t said anything about it, so he wasn’t going to. “He won’t even notice.”

“At least until he gets the bill, right?”

With a sigh Tom sank down into the plush arm chair in the corner of the room and dropped his head into his hands. “The bill gets automatically paid straight out of one of his accounts, and no, he won’t notice the difference of a couple hundred dollars. I’d really rather not talk about it.”

Carl raised an eyebrow at him, which Tom barely saw out of the corner of his eye, but tactfully let the subject go. “So, what do you think is going on with that boy, Sam?” he asked by way of changing the subject.

That might be an even harder conversation, but one that probably shouldn’t be pushed aside. Tom sighed and stretched out as much as the chair would allow. Carl had sprawled sideways across the large bed and was watching him.

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say probably the sort of thing that requires outside help. CPS sort of outside help.”

“You’re probably right, but I’m not sure that it’s up to us.”

There was a tense sort of quiet before Tom got up and went to stand by the large floor to ceiling window that overlooked the Mohawk River. “Maybe we should hold off speculating till we talk to the kid.”

“Do you think that’s why we’re here?” Carl asked quietly. “To talk to him?”

“I suppose errantry can come in all forms,” Tom said softly, still staring out the window.

“Giving advice just doesn’t feel like errantry, more like just being people.”

“Maybe,” Tom said slowly, not turning around even when he heard the bed groan as Carl got up, “maybe that’s what growing up means. Errantry is going to start being less about the big showstopper and more about the small details.”

“You keep talking like that and you’ll end up a Senior before you know it,” Carl chuckled.

Tom said nothing.

A hand settled on his shoulder and Tom jumped a little. “Are you okay?” Carl asked gently.

Managing, barely, to not lean back into that touch Tom nodded slowly. “Just thinking.”

“About?” Carl prompted, but Tom just shook his head, not ready to divulge the extent of the mess in there at the moment, or how something as simple as a hand on the shoulder could make it that much worse.

Fortunately, Carl’s stomach grumbled just in time to distract him. “I saw a KFC a couple of blocks back,” Carl said, frowning.

Tom mock shuddered. “That is _not_ real food. How about we just get some room service? It’s on my father.”

They dug a menu out and Carl winced at the prices, but Tom just shrugged and made the call after some debate over the options, ordering chicken parmesan for Carl and a pesto linguini for himself.

“So,” Carl grinned down at where Tom sat on the floor, flopping back across the bed while they waited for the food to arrive. “Tell me about this date you’re missing. Do you need to make a call? How did you meet her? What’s she like?”

Tom felt his pulse speed up and he swallowed a couple of times trying to remember how to breathe. He had been hoping that Carl had forgotten about that in all the chaos of what had followed. Unwilling to lie, however, he focused on the lush blue carpet trying to ignore the way his hands had started shaking.

“Umm, we met while I was on errantry in Munich a few months ago,” he said quietly, closing his eyes, unwilling to look. “And _his_ name is Alaric.”

The silence that followed was deafening and Tom felt his throat constricting. It wasn’t that he had a hard time coming out anymore. He’d had plenty of practice at that over the years. It wasn’t even that he really cared when people gave him a hard time about it these days. He was unapologetic about who he was, having accepted it a long time ago. It’s just that, this was _Carl_ , someone he actually enjoyed spending time with, not some stranger that he was never going to see again. That put a whole new weight on the matter.

Very slowly, looking anywhere but towards Carl, he got to his feet. “I’ll, umm—I’ll just go see if they have a second room available,” he said, hoping that his voice held steady till he made it out of the room.

“What?” The shock in Carl’s voice stopped him with his hand on the doorknob. “Why would you do that?”

The relief left Tom a little lightheaded, and he leaned heavily against the door until his legs felt like they could once again support his weight.

There was suddenly a hand between his shoulder blades and this time he let himself lean back into the touch, just slightly.

“You thought I would care that you’re gay?”

Tom winced at the hurt in Carl’s voice, but he couldn’t deny it. “Most people do,” he said quietly.

Carl put a hand under his elbow and prodded him into moving, settling him onto the bed and sitting side by side with him. “Well, I don’t think any less of you for it, I promise.”

A few measured breaths later and Tom smiled, although it still felt a little wobbly around the edges. “Thank you.”

There was a knock at the door, and Carl got up to let their food in. Once they had settled on the floor with two plates and glasses of soda Carl frowned. “Wait, Alaric. As in Alaric and Otto?”

Tom nodded. “I was working with Otto when we met.”

Carl frowned harder. “It’s probably better that you didn’t make that date, then. Alaric is absolutely playing away if that’s the case. He and Otto are lovers.”

“Oh, well, that’s… just lovely,” Tom grumbled, dropping his head into his hands. He could very distinctly feel the start of a spectacular tension headache settling in behind his left temple.

“I don’t know why Otto puts up with him,” Carl continued. “Thankfully Alaric isn’t a wizard, cause that boy is _definitely_ speeding up entropy.”

“I can assume,” Tom paused rubbing at his eyes, “that Otto doesn’t know.” Suddenly his pesto, the first few bites of which had proven it worth every penny, tasted like ashes in his mouth. Standing abruptly he turned towards the large attached bathroom. “I think I’m going to see just how hot I can make this shower and stay there until I’ve boiled myself.”

“Wait, what about your foo—”Tom closed the door, cutting off Carl’s protests.

Starting up the water, he undressed and climbed in slowly. Why did Carl have to be so nice about everything? It made him feel even worse that he had just been using Alaric as a distraction from the man sitting, probably very confused, in the outer room. If he had just been a jerk about the whole being gay thing he wouldn’t have to feel so guilty for the way his heartbeat stuttered at the crinkles around Carl’s eyes when he smiled. Of course, he couldn’t really picture Carl ever being cruel to anyone, which was part of the problem in its own right.

Twenty minutes later his skin was bright red, his headache was worse than ever, and his thoughts were no more settled than when he went in. With a resigned sigh he turned off the water, toweled off and redressed, after a quick wizardry to freshen up the clothes he had been wearing.

Cracking the door open Tom slunk back into the hotel room to find Carl sitting on the bed looking worried. His head snapped around when Tom closed the bathroom door with a small click.

“Are you okay?”

“Just a bit of a headache,” Tom muttered. It was the truth, if not all of it.

Little lines formed between Carl’s eyes, but he patted the bed next to himself. “Come here.”

Tom was fairly certain it was a terrible idea, but he went and sank down onto the entirely too comfortable bed. He felt strong fingers at his temples almost immediately and he startled slightly. Carl chuckled, but didn’t say anything, and Tom didn’t even notice his eyes getting heavier until he was sleeping.

*****

The first thing Tom noticed when he woke up was the sunlight on his face, which was odd since he never left the blinds open in his dorm room. The second thing that he noticed was that he was completely tangled up with another warm body. There was a leg under his own, a hand on his chest and a heartbeat beneath his ear. He was fairly sure his own heart stopped.

_Powers That Be, did I really fall asleep all over him last night?_ Tom’s panicked, and determinedly private, thoughts were interrupted by Carl’s voice in the back of his mind.

_I know you’re awake._

It took a valiant effort, but Tom wrenched himself away from Carl, squeezing his eyes shut in mortification. At least, that was the plan, but the arm Carl had draped around his shoulders was still there.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bed hog?” Carl asked, chuckling.

Tom half hoped a hole would open up in the bed and swallow him, and he briefly considered a wizardry to make one, but he gave it up as a lost cause. Early morning wizardries were not his strong suit, at least not until after his first cup of coffee.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered around a jaw cracking yawn.

“Come on lazy-bones.” 

Carl smiled and stretched, which let Tom feel the way the other man’s muscles flexed in the process. He forcefully tamped down the urge to shiver and peeled himself reluctantly out of the bed.

“I picked up a voicemail this morning already from Tyler. Sam is going to meet him this morning in about a half an hour. That should be just enough time for me to buy you a cup of coffee and for us to get there.”

Tom wanted to protest that Carl did not have to buy him a coffee, but he was warm and felt more rested than he had in a month, and Carl didn’t seem even remotely uncomfortable about their odd sleeping arrangement. He decided to keep his mouth shut and see where the day went. Suddenly this entire accidental trip wasn’t looking so terrible after all.

They trudged out to the lobby to check out of the hotel and then outside into the bright Saturday morning sunshine. Or rather, Tom trudged, trying to keep pace with Carl who it seemed ran at New York City pace even early morning.

There was a looming Dunkin’ Donuts sign just a couple of blocks down the street and they made their way towards food and caffeine. 

The cashier, a girl of maybe eighteen whose nametag read Jennifer, smiled brightly at Tom, who pretended not to notice. Carl snorted behind his mustache and Tom shouldered him gently for it, trying not to make the poor girl feel bad.

Stepping around Tom, Carl walked up to the counter. Jennifer flushed slightly, but smiled anyway. “What can I get you this morning?”

“I’ll take a bacon, egg and cheese bagel with an extra-large coffee, black.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Tom?”

Tom stared at the greasy menu options for a minute before answering. “Um, I’ll have blueberry muffin and a large coffee, heavy on the cream, light on the sugar.”

_Snobby Californian,_ Carl thought at him.

_At least I’ll still fit in these jeans in ten years,_ Tom thought back, trying not to grin. 

“That’ll be seven dollars and forty-three cents.”

Carl passed over a ten dollar bill and then dropped some change in the tip mug on the counter. 

The walk back to the bike path behind the community college was mostly quiet as they ate, but Tom found that it wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t as if Carl was a stranger. They had known each other for most of the two years they had been at NYU together, having had a few electives together. This past semester they had even spent some time studying in the common area of their dorm building together. Still, it was different working together, and Tom found himself trying to assimilate this new side of Carl into what he already knew of him. He decided, with a small sigh, that he probably liked the man even more now.

They had to walk a little farther down the trail this morning before they spotted a pair of heads tucked together over the lacy iced edge of the river.

“ _Dai_ ,” Tom called quietly, so as not to startle them if they were mid wizardry.

Tyler looked up and waved, his caramel colored skin a dark contrast to the nearly translucent pale of the boy next to him. The mop of red curls was actually the second thing Tom noticed, right after the large purpling bruise spreading across his left cheekbone.

“Sam, these are the guys I told you about, Tom and Carl,” Tyler said, sitting back on his heels. The ground was less muddy than it had been the day before, but certainly not dry enough to actually sit. Tom sat anyway.

“Hi Sam,” Tom smiled. “Tyler was telling us about your work here yesterday. How’s that going?”

The look of relief that flickered through Sam’s greenish brown eyes made Tom’s head hurt, but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s going okay. We seem to have to concept down pretty solid, but the fine tuning is turning out to be a little harder than we originally thought.”

“Well,” Tom smiled again, feeling a bit like he was talking to a skittish puppy, “I think we’ll stay out of that, unless you have any questions. Too many ideas just make things more complicated, usually.”

“Do you mind if we watch for a little bit, though? I’d love to see what you’ve got going,” Carl added from where he was leaning up against a birch tree.

Sam shrugged, the movement almost lost in his green and white Schalmont Middle School sweatshirt which was at least three sizes too big, engulfing his slight frame. “Sure. Go ahead.”

From where he joined Carl, their shoulders just brushing as they leaned together, Tom watched the boys lay out their wizardry carefully. Sam winced a couple of times when Tyler leaned around him to check the layout of the Speech and finally Tyler stopped mid-lean and spun around to face his partner.

“We can’t work when you can’t focus, and you can’t focus when you’re hurt,” he hissed.

Sam’s pale skin turned bright red and he glanced over his shoulder at Tom and Carl. “Yeah, well, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get out again.”

The sigh that Tyler let out was visible from where Tom and Carl were standing. “You know my dad said you could come stay with us. You don’t have to let her do this, Sam. The way she treats you is not okay.”

Sam shook his head. “She’d never let me.”

Tyler threw a pleading look at Tom and Carl, who slowly walked back over to join the boys.

Tom wasn’t quite sure what to say that wouldn’t make things worse. His relationship with his own family was tempestuous at best. Sometimes loving your family didn’t always equate to liking your family.

Carl didn’t seem to have the same reservations. “Your mother?” he asked quietly, nodding at the bruise on Sam’s face.

Staring out over the water, Sam didn’t say anything, but his fingers were twisting the ends of his sweatshirt, stretching out the hem.

Tyler opened his mouth, but Carl held up a hand. “I know you’re worried, Tyler, but I think maybe he needs to be able to talk about this himself.”

Wrapping an arm around his partner’s shoulders Tyler whispered, “It’s okay, Sam. These guys are wizards too.”

Sam just shook his head.

“My father kicked me out when I was not much older than you,” Tom said quietly. Three sets of wide eyes turned to him and he shrugged. “My mother overruled him in the end, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head to try and clear it of the memory of that night.

“What happened?” Sam asked, his voice shaking a little.

“When I first,” Tom stopped, taking a deep breath and settling in on the cold, damp ground. He hated talking about this, but sometimes it was best to lead by example. If he wanted Sam to talk about something difficult he couldn’t let himself shy away from it, either. “When I first told my parents I was gay my dad dragged me into the backyard and told me that he wouldn’t have some sissy boy living in his house. He locked me out and I spend the night at the house of a friend from school who wouldn’t ask too many questions.” He paused and locked eyes with Sam, who was staring at him intently. “My mother found me the next day and brought me home. Eventually my father learned to deal with it, and we’re even somewhat friendly now.” He snorted humorlessly. “Although I did go to college on the other side of the country so I wouldn’t have to see him so often. We do love each other, but we do much better if we don’t have to see each other very often. The point is, parents aren’t always right, just because they’re parents, and sometimes you have to do what’s right for you.”

A hand settled between Tom’s shoulder blades and this time he let himself lean back into Carl’s touch, taking the comfort offered.

“I don’t,” Sam sniffed and wiped at his face with his sleeve. “I don’t want her to get in trouble,” he whispered. “She’s my _mom_.”

“Sometimes,” Carl said quietly, “people need to get in trouble to know that what they’re doing is wrong.”

“Please let me talk to my dad,” Tyler pleaded. “He said he’d take care of you.”

Sam locked eyes with Tom again. “You and your dad get along now?”

“Mostly. Sometimes people just need a little space to appreciate what they have.”

Turning to Tyler, Sam took a deep breath. “Let’s go talk to your dad before I change my mind.”

Wide-eyed, Tyler scrubbed out the partial wizardry that had been interrupted and started laying out a teleportation wizardry, pausing only long enough to mouth “Thank you,” over Sam’s shoulder. Then both boys disappeared.

Tom and Carl stared at the spot the boys had been for a long moment. They both knew that it was going to get worse before it got better, but at least they had helped start something moving.

“I think maybe it’s time we get home, too,” Tom said finally, stringing together his own teleportation wizardry which would drop them both back into his dorm. He left a section for Carl to put in his name before closing it and sending them back to New York City.

The phone was ringing when they arrived in Tom’s dorm, and a quick glance at the odd configuration of numbers on the caller ID confirmed Tom’s fear.

“That’s Alaric, and I have no idea what to do about that,” he muttered.

Carl gave him a devious smile and reached for the phone. Not fast enough to stop him Tom watched in horror as Carl picked up the phone.

“Tom’s room. Oh, hello Alaric, this is Carl. Carl Romeo. We met about a year ago while I was working with Otto. How is he, anyway?” Tom didn’t need to hear both sides of the conversation to picture Alaric spluttering on the other end of the phone. “Yes, well, we got caught up in an errantry, you know how that goes, living with Otto for as long as you have.” There was a pause, and then, “No, he won’t be rescheduling that with you. He’s seeing someone else now, not to mention, I don’t think Otto would approve of you having dates with other people. If you’d like me to mention it to him, however—” Carl chuckled. “He hung up on me. That was rude.”

Tom felt his pulse in his ears, sure that couldn’t have happened. “I’m seeing someone else now, am I? And who, pray tell, might that be?”

Ears turning bright red, Carl ducked his head. “Well, I… I mean, after… I just thought…”

Afraid he was only hearing what he wanted to hear, Tom kept his tone teasing even while he tried to get Carl to actually say what he meant. “You might want to be sure of these things before announcing them to other people.”

“I’m sorry,” Carl mumbled. “After this morning, I had hoped that maybe you might…”

Stepping forward just into the edges of Carl’s space, Tom tried a hesitant smile even though he could taste his pulse at the back of his throat. “Are you asking me out?”

Carl groaned. “I’ve been trying to ask you out all semester! You don’t think I know exactly how _all_ my friends like their chai, do you?”

Taking pity on him, and trying not to let his smile get out of hand, Tom leaned forward and kissed him. He felt the tension drain from Carl as he wrapped his arms around the other man, deciding that the slight burn of Carl’s mustache across his lip was his new favorite sensation.

When they finally parted, only separating far enough for Tom to tuck his head into Carl’s neck, he could feel the laughter just bubbling up as Carl spoke. “I’m still never letting you near another worldgate unsupervised ever again.”

“It was an accident!” Tom protested.

“Schenectady!”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Probably not, no,” Carl answered, kissing him again.

Tom decided he could live with that.


End file.
